Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Friday, June 20, 2014
Settlers of Catan
If I could only recommend one game for a family to own, it would be Settlers of Catan, created by Klaus Teuber. It's the closest thing to a perfect game I've ever played. There are a number of reasons why I highly recommend it.
1. It’s a race, not a brawl
Games like Monopoly and Risk are brawls—you win by essentially beating your opponents into the ground and taking away everything they possess.
Races, however, are won by being the first to achieve an objective. In Settlers, you win by being the first to earn 10 victory points. Building settlements and cities gain you victory points that are never lost.
And as you build, the average number of resources you receive each turn will increase. This allows you to do more each turn and mitigates the effects of other players ganging up on you.
In my experience, races have much broader appeal than brawls, particularly among casual gamers. That’s not to say that Settlers is completely lacking in direct conflict between players—there’s competition for open spots on the game board and some accomplishments yield victory points that can be taken away—but these brawl elements are well balanced with the race elements of the game.
2. Clean, simple rules
The rules are simple enough that they can be taught verbally. The recommended age is 10 or older, so once the kids are old enough the entire family can play. And if you’ve ever played a game where the rules are ambiguous about what to do for a certain situation, you won't have to worry about that playing Settlers.
3. Minimal waiting
In many games, players are only allowed to perform actions on their turn. In Settlers, a player can only build on their turn, but players are eligible to receive and trade resources during any player’s turn, so there's incentive to barter so you’ll have what you need for building when your turn comes around.
4. Reasonable playing time
Most games can be played in 30 to 90 minutes—depending upon the number of players and their experience—so you can play at least several games in an evening. If your strategy isn’t paying off or you have a run of bad luck, you won’t have to suffer the entire evening.
5. Replayable
The game board is constructed by forming a large hexagon out of smaller hexagons representing different terrain types. This allows for a large number of board combinations affecting both resource availability and desirability of open spots. There are many different strategies for winning that can be learned through repeated play.
6. Experience counts
There's a good mix between luck and experience. Resource production each turn is determined by a die roll, so while it’s possible for a complete novice to win with beginner’s luck, experience definitely gives you an edge in selecting the best placement for your settlements and cities, determining which trades are in your favor, and devising the best strategy for a given situation.
7. Lots of expansions
If you like Settlers, there are a number of expansions for it (including one that allows up to six players rather than just the two to four that can play with the basic game). There’s also a family of similar games using the same tile-based resource generation mechanics.
8. Intelligent tutoring agent
OK, so this one’s only of interest to artificial intelligence nerds, but there’s an intelligent tutoring agent for Settlers built using CLIPS.
1. It’s a race, not a brawl
Games like Monopoly and Risk are brawls—you win by essentially beating your opponents into the ground and taking away everything they possess.
Races, however, are won by being the first to achieve an objective. In Settlers, you win by being the first to earn 10 victory points. Building settlements and cities gain you victory points that are never lost.
And as you build, the average number of resources you receive each turn will increase. This allows you to do more each turn and mitigates the effects of other players ganging up on you.
In my experience, races have much broader appeal than brawls, particularly among casual gamers. That’s not to say that Settlers is completely lacking in direct conflict between players—there’s competition for open spots on the game board and some accomplishments yield victory points that can be taken away—but these brawl elements are well balanced with the race elements of the game.
2. Clean, simple rules
The rules are simple enough that they can be taught verbally. The recommended age is 10 or older, so once the kids are old enough the entire family can play. And if you’ve ever played a game where the rules are ambiguous about what to do for a certain situation, you won't have to worry about that playing Settlers.
3. Minimal waiting
In many games, players are only allowed to perform actions on their turn. In Settlers, a player can only build on their turn, but players are eligible to receive and trade resources during any player’s turn, so there's incentive to barter so you’ll have what you need for building when your turn comes around.
4. Reasonable playing time
Most games can be played in 30 to 90 minutes—depending upon the number of players and their experience—so you can play at least several games in an evening. If your strategy isn’t paying off or you have a run of bad luck, you won’t have to suffer the entire evening.
5. Replayable
The game board is constructed by forming a large hexagon out of smaller hexagons representing different terrain types. This allows for a large number of board combinations affecting both resource availability and desirability of open spots. There are many different strategies for winning that can be learned through repeated play.
6. Experience counts
There's a good mix between luck and experience. Resource production each turn is determined by a die roll, so while it’s possible for a complete novice to win with beginner’s luck, experience definitely gives you an edge in selecting the best placement for your settlements and cities, determining which trades are in your favor, and devising the best strategy for a given situation.
7. Lots of expansions
If you like Settlers, there are a number of expansions for it (including one that allows up to six players rather than just the two to four that can play with the basic game). There’s also a family of similar games using the same tile-based resource generation mechanics.
8. Intelligent tutoring agent
OK, so this one’s only of interest to artificial intelligence nerds, but there’s an intelligent tutoring agent for Settlers built using CLIPS.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Security Theater
There’s this website I have to access occasionally for work, but the account password expires after a fixed period of time (a few months).
Fair enough. For security reasons, passwords should be changed periodically. Having them expire is a straightforward method to force users to comply with this policy. You log in, receive a notification that your password has expired, enter your old password once, your new password twice, and voila, your password is changed. All that's left to do is write it down on a sticky note and affix it to the front of your monitor.
The problem I’ve had with the way passwords expire for this particular account is that there’s no indication that the password has expired. If my password doesn’t work, I have no idea whether I just mistyped my password or it’s actually expired. As a result, if I enter the previously valid password too many times, I’m locked out of the account. Again there's no indication that this has happened. Wrong password. Expired password. Too many attempts. Bzzzzt! Try again. Fail.
What a great idea: a password policy that’s completely opaque to the people forced to use it. To change your password, you actually have to visit a separate website and, of course, none of the websites where you use your password link to it.
If you haven’t figured out yet where I’m heading with this story, it’s that I’ve been locked out of this account more than once. When that happens, I have to call the help desk to have my password reset.
Given the hostile design of the login process, I half expected my reset password to be a long string of Ms and Ns, all recited to me over a bad phone connection. Sorry, for security reasons, we can’t email it to you.
Fortunately it was surprisingly user friendly, but I immediately recognized the new password as one I was given previously: the six character company name plus three sequential digits.
The new password worked on the first try, but I wasn't forced to immediately change it, so it was obviously not temporary. That seems like a big pile of security stupid, but it’s their policy, so whatever. To my credit, I immediately headed over to the site I bookmarked to change it, but that option was nowhere to be found.
So now I have a password that’s easy to remember.
Security theater, adopting an ineffective or poorly implemented policy just to have a policy is worse than no policy at all; it consumes resources that could be more effectively allocated and gives a false belief that risk has been reduced.
Put more succinctly, the only security worse than no security is false security.
Fair enough. For security reasons, passwords should be changed periodically. Having them expire is a straightforward method to force users to comply with this policy. You log in, receive a notification that your password has expired, enter your old password once, your new password twice, and voila, your password is changed. All that's left to do is write it down on a sticky note and affix it to the front of your monitor.
The problem I’ve had with the way passwords expire for this particular account is that there’s no indication that the password has expired. If my password doesn’t work, I have no idea whether I just mistyped my password or it’s actually expired. As a result, if I enter the previously valid password too many times, I’m locked out of the account. Again there's no indication that this has happened. Wrong password. Expired password. Too many attempts. Bzzzzt! Try again. Fail.
What a great idea: a password policy that’s completely opaque to the people forced to use it. To change your password, you actually have to visit a separate website and, of course, none of the websites where you use your password link to it.
If you haven’t figured out yet where I’m heading with this story, it’s that I’ve been locked out of this account more than once. When that happens, I have to call the help desk to have my password reset.
Given the hostile design of the login process, I half expected my reset password to be a long string of Ms and Ns, all recited to me over a bad phone connection. Sorry, for security reasons, we can’t email it to you.
Fortunately it was surprisingly user friendly, but I immediately recognized the new password as one I was given previously: the six character company name plus three sequential digits.
The new password worked on the first try, but I wasn't forced to immediately change it, so it was obviously not temporary. That seems like a big pile of security stupid, but it’s their policy, so whatever. To my credit, I immediately headed over to the site I bookmarked to change it, but that option was nowhere to be found.
So now I have a password that’s easy to remember.
Security theater, adopting an ineffective or poorly implemented policy just to have a policy is worse than no policy at all; it consumes resources that could be more effectively allocated and gives a false belief that risk has been reduced.
Put more succinctly, the only security worse than no security is false security.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Designed by Apple
Apple’s Designed by Apple video is a tad pretentious, but I largely agree with its theme. Good design, however intangible, adds value to a product whether it’s greater productivity from software seamlessly integrated with hardware or the delight of using a device that just works. I can’t tell you how much the comfort in a comfortable chair is worth, but I know it’s worth something.
To its credit, Apple has a pretty good track record of designing great products, but sometimes they completely blow it.
Take the Airport Time Capsule.
Seriously, take it; I don't want mine anymore. In fact, I wish Time Capsule had a feature that allowed me to go back in time and reconsider purchasing it.
After a recent upgrade mishap, I had to restore my computer’s data from my Time Capsule (which is basically a WiFi base station combined with a hard drive that allows you to wirelessly backup your computer’s data using Time Machine, Apple’s incremental backup software). After letting the process run overnight, this was the amount of progress that had been made:
Seriously? Five days to restore around 300 GB of data? And to make things even worse, there was another 200 GB of data that needed to be separately restored from Time Capsule. Even after a trip to the Apple Store for advice, it took another four full days to completely recover everything.
Five wasted days, all because of poor design decisions.
Apple’s biggest mistake was making this device in the first place. Wireless backup for the amount of data on a computer is just not fast enough to be practical without annoying drawbacks. Even Apple recommends that the initial backup of your computer be done using an ethernet cable because it “may take overnight or longer, depending on how much data you have.”
For the price of a 3 TB Time Capsule you can instead buy unobtrusive 1 TB USB powered hard drives, one each for up to four computers. Time Machine works significantly faster when directly connected to an external hard drive. So much faster, that after my own experience I draw a blank thinking of a situation where I’d recommend Time Capsule.
I thought I’d set mine up efficiently when I originally bought it. It was directly connected via an ethernet cable to my iMac, which I use daily for most of my work, and I planned on backing up my MacBook, which I use infrequently, connecting via WiFi.
I was wrong. Even though there was a direct connection from the iMac to Time Capsule, it was using a much slower WiFi connection to transfer data. Eventually I was able to configure Time Capsule to use the ethernet cable, but that was after four days of waiting for restores to complete.
It should have just worked. I don’t care how Time Capsule is configured, if it’s connected by a cable with a faster transfer rate, it needs to use the damn cable.
Time Capsule is both a WiFi base station and a backup device. If it fails as a WiFi base station, I can easily replace it with another WiFi base station. But if it fails as a backup device, I have no recourse. I can’t easily replace the data stored on the device.
The design of the device should have made creation and recovery of a backups fast and dead simple. Zero configuration. If that meant fewer options in configuring it as a WiFi base station, that’s the call that should have been made. Instead, I had to browse internet forums looking for hints on how to correctly configure the device. Even after managing to get my data restored, I still have no idea how to configure it properly for the manner I originally intended to use it.
Finally, even the smallest details matter in design. Time Machine warns you if it hasn’t been able to perform a backup for an extended period of time. It should also warn you if it detects a Time Capsule connected by an ethernet cable that it’s not correctly configured to use. I doubt that’s technically complicated, but even if it is, here’s something that’s even simpler. During the four days I was waiting for my data to be restored, this message should have been displayed:
Here’s what Steve Jobs had to say about design:
To its credit, Apple has a pretty good track record of designing great products, but sometimes they completely blow it.
Take the Airport Time Capsule.
Seriously, take it; I don't want mine anymore. In fact, I wish Time Capsule had a feature that allowed me to go back in time and reconsider purchasing it.
After a recent upgrade mishap, I had to restore my computer’s data from my Time Capsule (which is basically a WiFi base station combined with a hard drive that allows you to wirelessly backup your computer’s data using Time Machine, Apple’s incremental backup software). After letting the process run overnight, this was the amount of progress that had been made:
Seriously? Five days to restore around 300 GB of data? And to make things even worse, there was another 200 GB of data that needed to be separately restored from Time Capsule. Even after a trip to the Apple Store for advice, it took another four full days to completely recover everything.
Five wasted days, all because of poor design decisions.
Apple’s biggest mistake was making this device in the first place. Wireless backup for the amount of data on a computer is just not fast enough to be practical without annoying drawbacks. Even Apple recommends that the initial backup of your computer be done using an ethernet cable because it “may take overnight or longer, depending on how much data you have.”
For the price of a 3 TB Time Capsule you can instead buy unobtrusive 1 TB USB powered hard drives, one each for up to four computers. Time Machine works significantly faster when directly connected to an external hard drive. So much faster, that after my own experience I draw a blank thinking of a situation where I’d recommend Time Capsule.
I thought I’d set mine up efficiently when I originally bought it. It was directly connected via an ethernet cable to my iMac, which I use daily for most of my work, and I planned on backing up my MacBook, which I use infrequently, connecting via WiFi.
I was wrong. Even though there was a direct connection from the iMac to Time Capsule, it was using a much slower WiFi connection to transfer data. Eventually I was able to configure Time Capsule to use the ethernet cable, but that was after four days of waiting for restores to complete.
It should have just worked. I don’t care how Time Capsule is configured, if it’s connected by a cable with a faster transfer rate, it needs to use the damn cable.
Time Capsule is both a WiFi base station and a backup device. If it fails as a WiFi base station, I can easily replace it with another WiFi base station. But if it fails as a backup device, I have no recourse. I can’t easily replace the data stored on the device.
The design of the device should have made creation and recovery of a backups fast and dead simple. Zero configuration. If that meant fewer options in configuring it as a WiFi base station, that’s the call that should have been made. Instead, I had to browse internet forums looking for hints on how to correctly configure the device. Even after managing to get my data restored, I still have no idea how to configure it properly for the manner I originally intended to use it.
Finally, even the smallest details matter in design. Time Machine warns you if it hasn’t been able to perform a backup for an extended period of time. It should also warn you if it detects a Time Capsule connected by an ethernet cable that it’s not correctly configured to use. I doubt that’s technically complicated, but even if it is, here’s something that’s even simpler. During the four days I was waiting for my data to be restored, this message should have been displayed:
Restoring “Giganto” via WiFi on the disk “Giganto”Just two small words would have helped me to figure out why something that should just work wasn’t working.
Here’s what Steve Jobs had to say about design:
“That's not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — New York Times, The Guts of a New Machine, 2003Apple, the way your Time Capsule works sucks.
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